Topline results are below. Full results, including crosstabs, can be found here.
Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of President Barack Obama’s job performance? If you approve, press 1. If you disapprove, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3. Approve .................. 40% Disapprove.............. 56% Not Sure.................. 4%
Q2 Do you support or oppose President Obama’s health care plan, or do you not have an opinion? If you support it, press 1. If you oppose it, press 2. If you don’t have an opinion, press 3. Support ........................................................... 29% Oppose ........................................................... 60% No Opinion...................................................... 10%
Arkansas is a very conservative state. That's not exactly breaking news but it's the overwhelming theme when breaking down the results of our latest survey there:
-60% of voters oppose Barack Obama's plans for health care, with just 29% in support. Independents are arrayed against it 73-20. Even among Democrats just 54% say they're for it and among white Democrats it's less than a majority.
-Only 45% of voters in the state say they believe Obama was born in this country, while 31% say they think he was not and 24% are unsure. Arkansas is the first of four states where we've polled the birther issue (Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado were the others) and found less than half of respondents confident that the President is a natural born citizen. The numbers are particularly dramatic among Republicans with 49% saying Obama was not born here to just 23% who grant that he was.
-55% of Arkansas voters say they prefer Rush Limbaugh's vision for the country to Barack Obama's. That includes 92% of Republicans, 64% of independents, and even 18% of Democrats. This is in spite of the fact that respondents on balance actually dislike Limbaugh, with 44% holding an unfavorable opinion of him to 35% positive.
Overall Obama's approval rating is a negative 40/56 spread, headed in the wrong direction since it was a positive 47/45 back when PPP surveyed the state in March. Obama has the approval of 72% of Democrats, 30% of independents, and 9% of Republicans.
Some folks are surprised that Blanche Lincoln is increasingly being thought of as vulnerable and that Arkansas' three Democratic House members made the NRSC's target list, but when you look at the baseline political conditions in the state you can see why the GOP thinks they might have some opportunities here.
We'll have numbers looking at Lincoln's situation tomorrow.
We were due for a New Jersey poll this week but we skipped it to do Arkansas instead.
Here's what's coming from the Natural State this week:
-Tomorrow we'll have numbers related to Barack Obama. A few hints to give you an idea of the landscape there right now: less than half of white Democrats support Obama on health care, fewer than half of voters overall think Obama was born in the United States, and 64% of independents think Rush Limbaugh has a better vision for the country than the President.
-Wednesday we'll have updated Senate numbers and Thursday we'll look at Governor.
So the plan when we did Arkansas was to just not poll New Jersey again until September, as polling there was becoming a broken record with Chris Christie holding an outside the margin of error lead in poll after poll after poll. But the last few weeks haven't been too good for him...
So that makes it tempting to skip Virginia in the cycle instead of New Jersey, but it would also be interesting to see if Creigh Deeds going up on the air is narrowing things any.
So since we want to survey whichever state is of greater public interest, we're just going to let you vote and decide at the top of the page. We'll poll the winner this weekend and it will come out next week, the other state we won't go into the field again probably until mid-September.
Topline results are below. Full results, including crosstabs, can be found here.
Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of President Barack Obama’s job performance? If you approve, press 1. If you disapprove, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3. Approve .......................................................... 38% Disapprove...................................................... 56% Not Sure.......................................................... 7%
Q2 Do you approve or disapprove of Republican Senator James Inhofe’s job performance? If you approve, press 1. If you disapprove, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3. Approve .......................................................... 52% Disapprove...................................................... 35% Not Sure.......................................................... 13%
A majority of Oklahoma voters disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as President, not a great surprise in the state he fared poorest in at the ballot box last year.
Just 38% of voters approve of his performance so far, with 56% disapproving.
Even among Democrats 31% disapprove of Obama's work, a rate far higher than PPP has found in any other state. And while he's doing pretty well with independents nationally, 58% disapprove of him in the Sooner State.
To get a gauge of just how conservative Oklahoma is we also took a look at public opinion about Rush Limbaugh in the state, and asked respondents whether they think Limbaugh or Obama has a better vision for America.
Even in this reddest of states, more voters have a negative opinion of Limbaugh than a positive one, by a margin of 45-39. But when it comes to whether they think the country should head more in the direction the President envisions or the one the talk show host would like to see Limbaugh wins out 56-44. 81% of Republicans, 58% of independents, and even 29% of Democrats picked him.
Topline results are below. Full results, including crosstabs, can be found here.
Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of President Barack Obama’s job performance? If you approve, press 1. If you disapprove, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3. Approve .................. 47% Disapprove.............. 45% Not Sure.................. 8%
Q2 Do you approve or disapprove of Democratic Governor Mike Beebe’s job performance? If you approve, press 1. If you disapprove, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3. Approve .......................................................... 68% Disapprove...................................................... 20% Not Sure.......................................................... 12%
Topline results are below. Full results, including crosstabs, can be found here.
Q1 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Rush Limbaugh? If favorable, press 1. If unfavorable, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3. Favorable........................................................ 31% Unfavorable .................................................... 50% Not Sure.......................................................... 20%
Q2 Do you think Rush Limbaugh is currently the leading voice for the Republican Party in America? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3. Yes ................................................................. 27% No ................................................................... 51% Not Sure.......................................................... 22%
New PPP surveys looking at the popularity of Rush Limbaugh in North Carolina and Arkansas find remarkably similar results, with only 31% of North Carolinians and 32% of folks in Arkansas holding a favorable opinion of the controversial talk radio host.
In North Carolina 27% of voters in the state believe that Limbaugh is the leading voice of the Republican Party. Interestingly the number of folks who think that is relatively equal along party lines- 30% of Democrats, 25% of Republicans, and 24% of independents hold that belief.
In some sense that speaks to the internal struggle Republicans have in North Carolina of finding the direction they should move the party in to overcome their recent losing streak in the state. The party needs to moderate its image to win, but a quarter of the party faithful see their voice as someone who's viewed dimly by 67% of self described moderates. How to keep that far right base happy while also trying to appeal more to voters in the center is a conundrum the party will have to figure out how to deal with to reach greater levels of success.
Other than Republicans (61%) and conservatives (56%) every demographic group that PPP tracks by ideology, party, region, gender, race, and age has a net negative opinion of Limbaugh. Only 26% of independents view him favorably, and even among conservatives 20% say they don't care for him.
In Arkansas 24% of the state's voters believe Limbaugh to be the voice of the party, and that view is held by 31% of respondents identifying as Republicans.
I heard you saw our Arkansas and North Carolina polls about you yesterday, and although I know you're putting up a tough facade it's pretty clear your feelings are hurt or you wouldn't be talking about it on the air.
Now as you point out, we are liberals, and because we're liberals we are of course compassionate people. We don't want to hurt people's feelings, Rush. Not even yours.
So here's our offer to you. We know you want us to poll a state, and find out that you're more popular than Obama there and that a majority of the people in it like you. You might have thought Arkansas was that state, given that the President lost it by 20 points last fall, but I guess not. So just pick a state you want us to poll where you think you'll get good numbers and we'll poll it. Just let us know.
Well apparently our poll gave Rush Limbaugh a couple days of material for his show. On Tuesday he announced he was going to have a female listener summit to figure out how to address the gender gap we found in his poll numbers, and then yesterday he actually held the summit. You can read that transcript here.
Someone asked me yesterday if it was possible the gender gap was simply a product of it being more likely that women are Democrats and men are Republicans, so I ran the numbers this morning by gender and party and here's what we got:
Women
Men
Gender Gap
Democrats
14/73 (-59)
22/73 (-51)
8
Republicans
75/10 (+65)
84/13 (+71)
6
Independents
30/56 (-26)
55/32 (+23)
49
So there is a gender gap within both the Democratic and Republican respondents to the poll, but the really huge one is among independents.
The Republican ladies love you Rush, and I don't think you have much chance with the Democratic ones. But you really need to appeal to those moderate women if you want to get that approval up over 50%.
PPP is best known for putting out highly accurate polling on key political races across the country, but we also do affordable private research for candidates and organizations. Why pay tens of thousands of dollars for a survey when one of the most reliable companies in the nation can do it for less?"
